CAPTAIN AMERICA #264

Based on the cover, you’d think this was chock full of guest stars, but actually it’s about a group of powerful telepaths who are altering reality, bit by bit, being used as weapons by a man who wants to erase Captain America from existence.

It’s a weird little story, but nice to have a done-in-one after the three-issue Red Skull story that preceded it.

At one point, Captain America is turned into a child.
Kinda cool.

Creators: DeMatteis and Zeck
Grade: B-
In a remote hotel, four people are hooked into strange machinery. Meanwhile, Captain America finds himself in various confusing scenarios, including working for President John F Kennedy, Bucky leading the Avengers, Sam Wilson as a shoe-shiner, himself as a child at a carnival, and Nazis parading around captive Jews, blacks, and mutants. Cap attacks the Nazis and finds a message calling him to the Waldheim hotel. Meanwhile, Morgan MacNeil Hardy adjusts his machine, a Telepathy Augmenter, not understanding why the four people hooked into it keep changing reality from what he wants. Cap travels to the hotel, battling as a child through Klu Klux Klan members to find Hardy has hooked himself into the machine to stabilize reality. Cap challenges Hardy, asking whose morals are correct: the racist, the Nazi supporter or the child who wants to play? In response, Hardy tries to erase Cap from reality. The machine overloads and kills Hardy along with two of the subjects hooked into it.